Sound Transit approves $5 million for Northgate pedestrian bridge

A conceptual drawing of the future Northgate light rail station that would straddle Northeast 103rd Street along First Avenue Northeast.
Photo: Sound Transit

A conceptual drawing of the future Northgate light rail station that would straddle Northeast 103rd Street along First Avenue Northeast.
Photo: Sound Transit

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Where parking currently is available at the Northgate Transit Center.
Photo: Sound Transit

Where parking currently is available at the Northgate Transit Center.
Photo: Sound Transit

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King County plans to build transit-oriented housing around the Northgate light rail station on property that currently is used by park-and-ride transit customers.
Photo: Sound Transit

King County plans to build transit-oriented housing around the Northgate light rail station on property that currently is used by park-and-ride transit customers.
Photo: Sound Transit

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Photo: Sound Transit

Photo: Sound Transit

Sound Transit approves $5 million for Northgate pedestrian bridge

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Sound Transit’s governing board voted Thursday to spend up to $10 million on improving access for bicyclists and pedestrians to a future light rail station outside Northgate Mall.

The plan would include $5 million for a pedestrian bridge over Interstate 5 between the station and the North Seattle Community College campus. The city of Seattle has agreed to match up to $5 million on the bridge, and $5 million more for improvements around the station.

It’s a compromise proposed by Sound Transit boardmember and Seattle City Councilman Richard Conlin after outcry by the Cascade Bicycle Club and other groups over Sound Transit’s plan to build a new parking garage outside the station. Several groups complained that paying for a big garage, estimated to cost about $20 million, would waste a chance to transform an auto-centric neighborhood around the nation’s first shopping mall into “a more walkable, bikeable, and transit-oriented community.”

The parking garage would serve park-and-ride customers who will lose spots after construction begins on the station. Of the 5,000 riders who now catch the bus there every day, about 1,500 use the park-and-ride. Once trains are running to Northgate, the station is expected to serve 15,000 boardings per day by 2030. But by then, only about 10 percent of riders would use the park-and-ride.

So, the question was why spend so much on a parking garage when it would only serve a small portion of future riders? A bridge for bicyclists and pedestrians would connect neighborhoods west of the freeway with the station and provide safer access.

Conlin. (Joshua Trujillo, Seattlepi.com file photo)

“It’s exciting to see Sound Transit moving forward with an access strategy that aligns with the community’s vision for the future of the neighborhood,” said Chuck Ayers, Cascade’s executive director, in an e-mail.

Sound Transit’s $5 million pledge is contingent on the city’s contribution and a successful environmental review process. Funding still would have to come from other sources since the bridge is estimated to cost about $20 million. If a financing package doesn’t come together by July 2015, then the money would go to other improvements around the station.

The new garage would be built just north of the transit center on property owned by Simon Properties Group, which owns Northgate Mall. The garage likely would be a public-private partnership, with both costs and parking spaces shared (with $12 million from Sound Transit). The garage would hold 600 to 900 vehicles, of which 450 would make up for spaces temporarily displaced during construction on the elevated light rail station. Once construction is over, it would have enough space so King County can develop current park-and-ride surface lots into housing that would feed riders into the light rail system, transit officials say.